This blog is maintained by two authors from the Great American Midwest

Saturday, August 18, 2018

Going off of Facebook and Life Experience

As I age, I find it interesting to see the ways I change, think and act. With life experience (i.e. as I get older) I have seen myself act much more rationally and deliberately.

I have been through a lot over the past three years or so. Now that many of those things are in the rear view mirror, I know that I can pretty much get through anything, and this experience has given me a lot of insight as to what may be happening in others lives - and created some cold, hard steel. Outside of a tragedy happening to my wife or kids, I look at problems now, shoulder shrug and say to myself "eh, I've been through worse". This experience has taught me that you just don't know what people are going through sometimes. How all of this affects my attitude toward Facebook is explained below.

I was a daily Facebook user for a long time but it morphed from a pretty cool place where I could see my friends on vacation and watch their kids grow up into a toxic swamp of advertising, information tracking, and narcissism.

Several months ago I went idle. In other words, I left my information up there but started to not check in. Mostly this was due to a large project at work - I simply didn't have time. But when some of that work project began to wane I was pleasantly surprised that I just didn't need Facebook anymore. Having to sift through all of the ads and other garbage was too time consuming and I didn't get any enjoyment out of it any more. My life experience taught me that time is the most valuable thing I have and I need to use it wisely - and I do not have any extra energy for toxicity.

Yesterday I took the next step and I put my account into "de-activation". This means that you can someday log back on if you want to, but you are un-seeable by others on Facebook. I did this because I am going to give myself a little time to try to remember if I had any photos there I really want (likely not). I am guessing there are none and that I will take the final step and "delete" the account in a few weeks.

Political season is coming and that makes Facebook even worse. The people that you thought were your friends (well, they still are your friends, but work with it) turn into screaming lunatics and you find out things about them that aren't, well, the most desirable traits - at least in my book.

I am still on Instagram and actually enjoy it. I like how famous people will take you into their world and you can see how they live, even though you are only getting the good parts and much of it is fake. The price is right.

I am sure that Instagram will get wrecked too - heck they are owned by Facebook - but this is why we can't have nice things. In the big picture, social media is a losing proposition for pretty much anyone, but I get why people like it. I simply don't have time for the garbage anymore. I guess it is called "growing up".